Hanna Rosin talks candidly to Dr Brooke Magnanti about why having relationships pose more of a threat to women than men, and sex, her favourite bit of her new book: The End of Men.

Hanna Rosin talks about women avoiding relationships when they are younger so they can stay in control of their careers, in her book ‘The End of Men and The Rise of Women’.

By Dr Brooke Magnanti, formerly known as the Belle de Jour

I first meet Hanna Rosin just before she takes the stage at Chicago Ideas Week. It’s an intimate theatre, the audience polite and attentive as this small, neatly dressed woman takes the stage. She stands right at the front and delivers a devastating account of what has happened to traditional masculinity in recent decades, and especially, since the recessions of the last few years.

It’s an emotive topic. “I don’t think the changes I describe are ‘good’ or ‘bad’,” Rosin explains, pre-empting the critics. “They are new and confusing though.” Yet the audience is accepting of the message, even friendly. When she gets to the video of her young daughter holding forth on ‘Why Girls Rock’, they are leaning forward in their seats, nodding and laughing. By the time she tells us about the sorority girl who declared “men are the new ball and chain,” the audience is eating out of her hand. As much as her new book The End of Men has attracted criticism, there is something in this we all recognise instinctively: manhood is not what it used to be. And no one knows entirely where it’s going.